KS-Sen: Taylor drops out

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The people of Kansas (rather than the legislature) have voted for a non-Republican for Senator in 3 years: 1912, 1930, and 1932. It would be amazing if after 82 years, 2014 joins the list.

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Kobach has ruled Taylor stays on the ballot. Hasen examines the legalities here.

Taylor had gotten an OK from the SOS office before he turned his letter in.
This is why you should never have a Republican Secretary of State.

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Kansas doesn't seem like the kind of state that has a sizable contingent of "reflexively Democratic" voters. They tend to have a fairly high level of voter participation, which likely means they're relatively informed voters relative to the country as a whole.

If Texas Democrats nominated a dead man, he'd predictably lose but he'd still win the Rio Grande Valley in a landslide. If Alabama Democrats did the same, the voters in the Black Belt would pick the corpse over the Republican. Kansas doesn't really have any Democratic voters like that.

Or sometimes the dead man wins statewide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Missouri,_2000

Well, it was made clear who the replacement would be. Voters knew they were technically voting for Carnahan's Wife and not the late Carnahan himself, so it wasn't exactly 'voting for a dead man'.

In any case, Taylor will be challenging the decision: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/election/article1504835.html

Representative Patsy Mink (D-HI) won despite a vote for her just meaning you'd get another two elections.

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I think blaming the Kansas SOS here is wrong. If the KS election law explicitely says that you can only step down as candidate by notifying the SOS that you are unable to serve if elected, then Krobach is only acting according to the law. It's his job.

You should rather expect the Taylor campaign to be smart enough to know the election law and they should have put the "unable to serve" thing into his letter.

Except the letter Taylor wrote was written with the assistance of the Secretary of State's office, implying the Secretary of State knowingly deceived the Taylor campaign.

Its much more likely that they consulted some mid-level bureaucrat in the office who got it wrong. I very much doubt the secretary himself was involved in the decision in any way.

Well, in that case the Taylor campaign should just send a 2nd letter to Kobach's desk with the "unable to serve after elected" thing in it and Kobach needs to accept (unless he's willing to be OK with his incompetent staff that doesn't know the election law of the state).

A good point indeed.
Just because it was not the SOS himself, any "mid-level bureaucrat"

It wasn't just some mid-level bureaucrat, it was the assistant secretary of state himself, Brad Bryant.

It's the old good cop, bad cop routine.

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How exactly could Kobach "force" Democrats to select a replacement? If they decide not to, there's nothing he can do about it. Or perhaps the Democrats could select Kobach, Roberts, Brownback, or Yoder?

Could they choose someone who legally changes their name to "Dont Vote For Me"? LOL.

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The Pat Roberts campaign goes completely into lala land.

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Yes, Senators from Nevada and Missouri ensured that the Kansas State Supreme Court was packed with liberal activist judges.

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"In response to the ruling, Kobach said a separate statute protects the “rights of Kansas Democrats” to have a replacement candidate. He said he would move the mailing date for absentee ballots to Sept. 27 and that the chair of the Democratic Party has been informed she has eight days to select a replacement candidate."

Loser.

And the Democratic Party waived that right. Hopefully the voters take note, and throw out Kobach along with Roberts and Brownback.

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McCain and Dole will campaign for Roberts next week.

http://robertsforsenate.com/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=5a9715d4-210e-4833-ae51-c60080ca803e

I guess they'll try to portray Orman as a rubber-stamp for President Woodrow Wilson.

Now, now, the only time that Kansas didn't vote Republican for Senate during either of their lifetimes was President FDR, which Orman must be a rubber stamp for.

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Greg Orman, the independent U.S. Senate candidate in Kansas, told The [Kansas City] Star’s Editorial Board Monday that he could not name a Supreme Court justice that he would have opposed had he been in office.

Way to go. If only more politicians were thinking like Orman, US politics might not be the single most hated thing in the world, inside as well as outside of the US.

Well, hopefully he'd be a vote for ending judicial filibusters then.

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Anti-abortion voters could save Roberts:

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Well, they voted for Sebelius twice despite her being pro-choice.